


Beggar

by zinjadu



Series: And not to yield [7]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Bedside Vigils, F/M, Heavy Angst, Near Death, Post-Game(s), Sacrifice, kaidan POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26128735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: The specter of death makes beggars of us all.  After Zahra destroyed the Reapers, Kaidan prays for her to come back to him.  Somehow.Takes place after ME3, can be read as a standalone without the rest of the series.
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard, Kaidan Alenko/Shepard
Series: And not to yield [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604602
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Beggar

The house is quiet in the middle of the night. Quiet except for the machines that keep her alive. They beep and click over, following the steady hiss of the ventilator that breathes for her. Kaidan hovers in the doorway, watching her chest rise and fall, watching her heartbeat on the monitor, watching her lay completely still. Like a splinter in his throat, he can’t swallow this image. Zahra Shepard, laid out and still. 

Like the dead.

The floorboards creak under his feet. The house is well stocked. His parents had listened to him, built up a stock of supplies, done everything they could to hunker down and be ready. He'd never thought, never imagined coming home like this.

_ “Kaidan?” His mother's voice trembles on his name, the shotgun in her hands still smoking from the warning shot. Shouldn’t have surprised her. She’s shaking as she sets the gun down. “Mi hijo!” Then she’s hugging him and crying, and he wants nothing more to break down and cry with her, but he can’t. He can’t, not yet, not yet. _

_ “Mom, Mom,” he says, voice rasping in his throat. “Mom, we need to get her inside. She doesn’t have long.” _

She’s been put in a coma to keep her down while her body recovers. Medically necessary, drugs fill her system from the steady IV drip. He can hear what no one says, though. It’s between the pauses in the daily updates from Doctor Chakwas and Lawson. How long she’ll need, that’s anyone’s guess. The doctor and Lawson wrangle back and forth, banking on the more time being better.

But how long is too long, is the question no one asks. It’s the question he can’t bring himself to ask, either. 

And what happens then? He can’t stop his thoughts from going in that direction. From following the spiral twists and turns of the most horrible what ifs. It crosses over from planning into obsessing, but he can’t stop himself. Can’t stop wondering if he did the right thing.

_ “Where are we going?” They all ask him that, wanting to know why he set the course for some nowhere bit of land in the North American continent. He shuts them out, because the questions don’t matter. Only getting there as quickly as possible. Engaging would only lead to arguments.  _

_ He leans over the pilot’s chair, Joker back at the helm. Kaidan catches his eye. “Keep the heading, Joker. Don’t stop.” _

_ Kaidan knows he won’t. _

He checks the readouts. It isn’t necessary. There are alarms keyed to go off the second one of the monitors detect something wrong. A dip in brain activity, a skip in her heartbeat, the mere suggestion of a clot. All those cybernetics are back up and running, and they have one Miranda Lawson to thank for it. 

It’s easier to look at the readouts than look at her. 

Burn scars trace out the exact pattern of wires he remembers from Horizon. For a little while those had gone down to faint, white lines. The places where she had been stitched back together once before. Now they flared, red and angry in the darkness. Like she had been flayed open, exposed.

_ “ZEE!” Her name is a ragged thing in his raw throat. He slides down the slope of debris, blood oozes from between hasty stitches in his side. For a second, he can’t understand what he’s seeing. An N7 chestplate, a ruined temple of support beams, but then the world clarifies. It’s her, it’s her, it’s her. Gritting his teeth against the sharp crack of biotic static, he throws the beams up and of the hole. _

_ “Zee,” he whispers, fingers hovering over her face before pulling her ruined body to him and rocking her back and forth. _

The metal rail of the bedsted squeals under his grip. It takes a conscious effort to pry his fingers away. To let go. God, how he hates the very idea of letting go. He never should have let her go alone. Maybe it would have killed him, going with her, but that would have been better than being here. Being here and looking down at her with the cotton balls and tape over her eyes and a colostomy bag attached to her.

She would hate knowing anyone had seen her like this. Would hate it so much. Would she hate it enough to wake up right now, tear those tubes right out of her, throw the machines out the door? Hell, out the window? God. God, he could only hope for that, only pray for it.

He can’t remember the last time he’s prayed so much. Prayed and meant it.

_ The arms of the Crucible open. Like whales in the ocean, they’re moving faster than they appear to for the weightlessness of space. He sags against the rail at the command post, blood smearing across the shining, gleaming metal. Traynor’s face blanches at the sight. But he had to be here, had to see it done, had to get her ship and crew through one last fight. He could do that much for her, that much at least. _

_ “Please.” The word falls silently out of his mouth as blackness takes him. The next thing he remembers is waking up, and they had left her behind. He had left her behind, and the sinking sensation in his chest is more of a sucking wound than the gash in his side. _

Jaw and shoulders tense, he lowers himself carefully into the chair beside her bed. A habit from when she would wake up at the drop of a hat. Now, she’ll either wake up or not on her own, nothing he does will make any difference. That’s the worst part. The first time—the first time she had been beyond his reach. But here, he can touch her, see her, even smell her. That mix of bitter-metal ozone and gun oil, now shot through with the sick stench of burning flesh and waste.

He takes her hand in both of his and presses a small rectangle of stone into her palm. Every night, like a ritual, a spell to bring her back. If he does this enough times, if he traces her finger along the engraved letter, if he sets the stone against her lips, if he holds her hand around the  _ mezuzah _ , she’ll come back.

_ “Kaidan.” There’s a finality in her voice that he can’t unhear. No goodbyes, he swore no goodbyes. Her boots thud on the metal of the door, ever ungentle, but carefully she places something in his hand, curling his fingers around it. “I will always love you.” _

_Blue and green swirl in her eyes, and the bitter-metal ozone of her field flares. Like a proud hawk about to take flight would flare its wings._ _He wants to reach for her, to fight against Garrus’s sure grip, but he’s bleeding out and the small rectangle of stone in his hand is something he can’t let go of. Won’t. He’s still only dimly aware of the hot, slick blood running underneath his armor. It’s second to the growing, aching certainty in the center of his chest. In a broken voice he screams her name, but it’s lost in the roar of missiles._

_ Zahra Shepard turns, and she runs headlong into destruction. _

“Zahra,” he whispers past a tear-choked throat. He holds her hand to his stubbled cheek, like he can hold her here forever. His hands around hers, her fingers around the stone. “Please,” he begs as his chest heaves like a dam about to break, “please come back to me. Please come home.”


End file.
